Lunn grew up the only boy in a family of seven girls and loved his job at the mill, Bledsoe said.

“We were all very close,” she said. “None of us are feeling anything right now.”

Another shooting victim was flown by air ambulance to Victoria General Hospital, where his condition was listed as critical but stable Wednesday evening.

The other man injured is Tony Sudar, the company’s vice-president of manufacturing, who was shot in the face but in stable condition in Nanaimo hospital Wednesday afternoon, his wife confirmed.

An officer from the police Emergency Response Team arrested the shooter inside the mill without incident, said RCMP Supt. Mark Fisher, the Nanaimo detachment commander.

Sudar was scheduled to be a company witness later this month in a long-standing and acrimonious dispute over severance pay between the Steelworkers Union, which represents workers at the mill, and owner Western Forest Products.

His appearance was part of proceedings before an arbitrator that had been delayed in September and January.

More than 300 workers were laid off when the mill closed in 2008, but around 30 were rehired two years later just before a deadline in the collective agreement that would have forced the mill to pay out severance to employees if it was still closed.

The United Steelworkers Local 1-1937 has accused the company of reopening the sawmill in 2010 with a skeleton crew, to skirt millions in severance payments.

Steelworkers local president Brian Butler had outlined how “extremely frustrated” members were with the company and arbitration delays in recent bulletin updates to members.

The dispute is part of an unsettling and tense backdrop at the mill, though neither Nanaimo RCMP nor Western Forest Products will say if it contributed to the shooting.

Don Demens, CEO of Western Forest Products, confirmed the man arrested is a former worker at the mill, but would not speculate on his motive or how and when his employment there ended.

“I have no idea how this occurred,” Demens said. He called the shooting a “tragedy” and offered his condolences to the families affected.

Demens said the facility had been operating on one shift for several years and there were no more layoffs pending. In the past, it had employed workers in two shifts.

The RCMP’s Fisher said investigators are still trying to determine if the gunman had shown any previous signs of violence, and what the relationship was between those involved.

Police officers arrived at the mill within three minutes of multiple 911 calls reporting shots being fired shortly after 7 a.m., according to Fisher.

He said the alleged gunman started shooting in the employee parking lot, which is located in a dusty section of industrial land off Nanaimo’s waterfront, near abandoned railcars and parked tractor-trailers.

The rampage continued into a mill office. Police recovered a shotgun at the scene.

“I want to stress that at this time we have no indication that there are any other suspects involved in this incident,” said Fisher, adding that police believe the suspect acted alone.

It’s not the first case of deadly workplace violence in B.C.’s history.

The government overhauled worker assessment and violence prevention rules within the civil service after a manager in a Kamloops ministry office shot and killed two co-workers after being told he was fired in 2002. There were indications of erratic behaviour before the shooting, but no one came forward to report the signs.

In Vancouver in 2008, a worker who lost his job in a warehouse run by TallGrass Distributors Ltd. stormed a Christmas party to shoot and kill his former boss.

A common theme in mass shootings is when a person feels wronged and owed justice that they are, for whatever reason, denied, according to Edward Taylor, the director of the School of Social Work at the University of B.C. Okanagan campus and an expert on workplace and school shootings.

He said it’s a misconception that people just “snap” and start shooting.

“When we see people in workplace shootings and school shootings, it’s usually a process that starts out with belief systems that become obsessions that lead to a feeling that I’m owed the right of reprisal for this,” Taylor said. “Workplace and school shootings are almost never where someone just suddenly snaps. That’s one of the mythologies. This is almost always a process that is occurring over time.”

Companies need to be careful when terminating employees so that they offer a genuine and empathetic process that doesn’t ring hollow to the employee, said Heather Mackenzie, a lawyer and founder of The Integrity Group, a Vancouver company that helps prevent violence in workplaces.

“It needs to be thoughtful,” Mackenzie said of company firings in general. “A lot of employers who get an A+ for the way they manage the conclusion of someone’s employment (means) they’ve thought things through and are able to offer support, structure and severance in a way that’s as helpful as possible, is dignified and allows somebody to leave with their head held high.”

There are legal requirements in place from WorkSafeBC for employers to address potential workplace violence, but there are always multiple layers of issues involved in violent incidents, said Mackenzie.

She said people in Nanaimo are “terrified” at the incident, and she helped the city draft a bulletin to staff on Wednesday.

“There are many questions to be answered in this and people want to know because only in knowing can you develop some sense of control in your head around this,” she said. “When it’s so random and inexplicable, that’s what messes with people’s heads.”

The shooting sent shock waves through Nanaimo, a coastal community with deep roots in the pulp and sawmill industry.

Mayor John Ruttan was saddened to learn it happened in his city.

“I was shocked,” he said. “These incidents do happen, they are not totally foreign, but you always hope that it won’t happen in your own community.”

Premier Christy Clark called it a “horrible tragedy.”

“This kind of tragedy is almost unknown in British Columbia,” she said in a speech to the legislature. “Most of us here today cannot imagine what the victims and their families must be going through.

“They should know they are not alone. The people of British Columbia are standing with them.”

Outside the taped-off entrance to the mill, Charlie Gallagher, a supervisor at the Western Forest Products mill in nearby Ladysmith, propped a bouquet of flowers against a chain-link fence. He said he wasn’t sure if he knew anyone involved, but he felt compelled to pay his respects.

“It’s our colleagues and people we’ve worked in the industry with for a number of years,” he said. “I may not have known them, but I think we owe them that.”

Western Forest Products closed all its Vancouver Island facilities Wednesday after the shooting and said grief counsellors would be available for staff as they come to grips with the tragedy.

Kevin Douglas Addison was charged with two counts of first degree murder and two counts of attempted murder late Wednesday night. He’s due in Nanaimo Provincial Court Thursday afternoon.

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